


what the wind knows

by x (ordinary)



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012), Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Rise of the Guardians, M/M, but it's not one sided iajs, listen i don't really know where this came from, really subtle sterek mostly from stiles side ok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-04
Updated: 2013-01-04
Packaged: 2017-11-23 15:09:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/623525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ordinary/pseuds/x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He shouts something vague and joyous as he soars across the sky, and to its credit, the wind carries that, too. As they near Market Street, the currents slow down, letting Stiles drag bare fingertips along brick walls, and with his touch, frost blossoms in delicate shapes. His presence lowers the air's temperature degree by precious degree until the city's inhabitants can see their breath. This is who is: the bringer of cold, the patron saint of snow days, the force that brings blizzards down with wrath worse than a woman scorned. </p><p>Stiles is Jack Frost. He's coming to accept that, even if he can't accept the rest. (Being a Guardian, that is.)</p><p>--</p><p>(In which Stiles is Jack Frost, Derek is the Easter Bunny, and I have no excuse.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	what the wind knows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [noplzno](https://archiveofourown.org/users/noplzno/gifts).



> i'd say not to judge me, but seeing how i also judge me, it's ok if you do too
> 
> you probably need a bit of familiarity with the rotg world, but i think you could follow it even w/o that<3

The January wind is sharp, bitter, and the kind of cold that gets down into your bones, and Stiles rides it anyway. The currents wrap around him, stealing his breath as it whips him from the top of the Golden Gate Bridge all the way to downtown San Francisco, a bullet train of its own design.

(Sometimes, the other Guardians sometimes ask if he controls the wind, and he just laughs, because they're partners in crime, not master and servant.)

Stiles shoots across the San Francisco skyline, his sweatshirt (red like new blood, except where the cuffs have started to go blue) painting a stark contrast against the clouds (gray, and fit for a funeral). Most of this state is beyond his dominion, but the city is comfortable, a pocket of sunny California that yields to his power. (They call it a microclimate. He calls it a home.)

He shouts something vague and joyous as he soars across the sky, and to its credit, the wind carries that, too. As they near Market Street, the currents slow down, letting Stiles drag bare fingertips along brick walls, and with his touch, frost blossoms in delicate shapes. His presence lowers the air's temperature degree by precious degree until the city's inhabitants can see their breath. This is who is: the bringer of cold, the patron saint of snow days, the force that brings blizzards down with wrath worse than a woman scorned.

Stiles is Jack Frost. He's coming to accept that, even if he can't accept the rest. (Being a Guardian, that is.)

He touches down on 2nd, dragging his bare toes along the sidewalk's pavement just enough to ice it over, watches as a couple walks through him and promptly slip on the slick patch. They tumble to the ground, grabbing at each other in a way that only makes it worse, and Stiles' resulting smile is wide, and the way it doesn't reach his eyes makes it look painted on. ("Your face is always smiling," Lydia sometimes says, the statement both knowingly smug and appreciative at the same time, because not just anyone would show their teeth so willingly to the Tooth Fairy herself.)

He shimmies up a nearby lamp post, and with a little help from the wind, Stiles sends a powerful gust down the street, watching as people on their way to lunch pull up their collars, cross their arms and shove their hands into their armpits, lament about not having a coat or a scarf or a hat.

It's nothing new, the fact that people don't see him: no one ever has. Sometimes Stiles is grateful, because it means he can play prank after prank after prank without consequence, but most of the time, it just makes him bitter. Stiles stands abruptly and launches himself into the air, shoving the darker thoughts away into a corner of his mind, and instead rides the wind higher and higher until he lands lightly on the top of a nearby office building. It's beautiful on the roof, but the impressive view of the city below isn't why he's here. Stiles is looking for someone in particular (someone _important_ /), and the fact that it's high noon means it's about time for that someone's appearance.

A familiar mop of brown hair exits the TinyCo building across the street, and even though he only sees it out of the corner of his eye, Stiles dives for the edge of the roof, fingers gripping at the rails there before hopping over them, crouching like a gargoyle at the ledge.

(His name is Scott McCall, and he's the only thing Stiles remembers about his past.)

He tracks the boy with his eyes (even if it's been a long time since Scott was a boy), and there's a beautiful girl at his side, with hair that's long and slightly curled and such a dark brown it borders on black. Stiles likes her. They're good together: for each other. Scott had been a sad individual until he'd met her, moping along in his grief, an invisible ball and chain that had weighed him down so far that he'd nearly drowned himself in a bottle. She'd been angry, jagged at the edges and delicate like already shattered glass, crushing herself into dust.

But together, they are more. So Stiles watches them. He rests his chin on drawn up knees, and exhales so harshly a few snow flurries are expelled. They're going to get tapas, he can tell from the way the pair veers towards the Academy of Art University building. Stiles joins them, sometimes, and they complain about how frosty it is inside but are so absorbed in each other that it hardly matters, to them. His presence just apples Allison's cheeks and gives Scott an excuse to slide an arm around her, holding her like something precious and fragile.

(Stiles' habits are sad ones, but they're his business and his alone.)

They turn the corner, and he calls down the wind to ride over, but the sound of dirt and the smell of something bright, fresh, and green permeates the air. The hair on the back of Stiles' neck rises, and he refuses to turn to face someone whose presence he's yet to enjoy.

"Oh boy," he Stiles says, his voice dry. "Not this shit again."

There's a snort from somewhere behind him, and the loping gait Stiles recognizes as the Easter Bunny's. He doesn't give the other Guardian the satisfaction of further acknowledgement, itching to take off after Scott and Allison despite his arrival. But he doesn't. (Stiles has lost enough races to admit defeat gracefully, lest he get served again.)

"Shut up," Derek growls, a heavy presence behind Stiles, and a clawed hand fists into his hoodie, grabbing at it, yanking him back over the railing with ease, holding Stiles up in the air like he's last week's laundry. It's unfair how tall Derek is, nearly seven feet if Stiles' isn't mistake. (Despite the imposing figure, the fluffy black tail twitching behind Derek always makes Stiles laugh.)

"This isn't your territory," Stiles replies, blandly. He's used to this treatment, and getting out of it is easy, but he feels like being deadweight on Derek's arm, for now. So instead of giving Derek the satisfaction of squirming, Stiles just crosses his arms. "Plus, Easter is what, five months away? You're clearly here for a reason."

Derek scowls, but like _that's_ anything new, unusual, or even remotely interesting. Stiles' grin is a cruel one, sharp around the edges. "So," he continues, "what does North want now?" Predictably, the pooka drops him, but Stiles lands gracefully with the lightest breeze at his feet. He crows victoriously, circling around Derek. "You are so his bitch."

Clenching his fists, Derek snarls, and Stiles thinks it's beautiful (and reminds himself to set another blizzard on Colorado this Easter, just for him).

"North," Derek grits out, like it pains him to say it, "says that he's wiped out from Christmas. So he couldn't come. So he sent me."

Stiles crows triumphantly, because it's always something with that man (when he's not yelling at Greenberg for this, or Greenberg for that, despite the fact that exactly zero of the yetis are _actually_ named Greenberg. Stiles has asked them.) So with a roll of his eyes and a disbelieving nod, Stiles clambers up on top of some old boxes, full of Moon knows what, his weight precariously balanced atop of them. "What does he want now? Seriously? Pitch is gone! Has been gone, will continue to be _gone_ , and probably won't show up again until humanity has colonized _space_. Seriously. We obliterated him pretty hard."

Derek's wordless curl of the lip is distracting as always. So is the fact that he seems to have an aversion to shirts, even in winter. He would accuse Derek of doing it on purpose, but the Warren is warm and wild and balmy even on the coldest of days. It's green as far as the eye can see (the worst color), and Stiles has ended up mysteriously shoved into the river of pastel paint more times than he cares to admit to. It's a point of pride that he stay as far away as possible from that place, because his very skin had been dyed pink and blue and sunshine yellow for weeks. 

"Well," the Easter Bunny says, in his monosyllabic way of communicating that Stiles is just so fond of (that's sarcasm, if you can't tell). "If it makes you feel better to think that you "obliterated" him with your snowflakes and gentle breezes--" Stiles yelps an interruption, but Derek plods on, folding his arms, golden bracers glinting in the weak, fog-filtered sunlight. "Go right on ahead. But you're wrong."

(He pauses for what Stiles assume is dramatic effect. It's a good thing he's pretty.)

Nonetheless, Stiles don the face of Jack Frost and nods along, pretending to be responsible in a way that he's yet to actually master. "So I'm assuming we're doing that thing, now."  
  
The scowl deepens. "What thing." It's a statement, not a question, because Derek doesn't believe in asking questions like nobody believes in Jack Frost.

"That thing where you tap your foot and send me down a physically impossible tunnel, sliding towards the North Pole." Ugh, Stiles is turning green at just the thought.  
  
"Sounds right," the pooka drawls, and so Stiles levitates in the air, out of reach of those impossibly long (and muscled, and tattooed, and gorgeous--) arms.

"No way."

"Yes, 'way'." Stiles can hear the airquotes in his voice, that smug bastard, Derek doesn't even have to lift his hands to make them.

The wind picks up around them, the sound of it roaring like an ocean's wave, and Stiles floats in circles around the pooka, his smile genuine, Scott out of mind but not forgotten. "I have had it up to my ears, dude, with those fucking tunnels." Derek is circling, too, to keep his back away from Stiles, and there's a growl deep in his throat, and his tail is poofed up to twice its normal size. Stiles tries to think of a more dignified word besides terrified, but he then figures it's all Derek deserves. Sometimes he deserved to be the humiliated one, and no, Stiles wasn't thinking of the winter storm of '99 where Easter had come out on top in the nick of time. No sirree.

With icy fingers, Stiles grabs Derek by the scruff of his neck, the currents of air surrounding them doing the majority of the work, and soon the two of them are flying towards the pole, their path a straight shot like an arrow flying true. He's got his arms around Derek's bare chest, holding onto him, for his sake more than his own.

"I am going to kill you," Derek growls, but it's significantly less scary when Stiles can feel his fluttering heartrate, can feel his claws dig into his hoodie, cutting the fabric, and he finds that he isn't even irritated about it. (Despite the fact that this is one of his few that hadn't turned to that terrible navy blue that reminds Stiles that he's dead dead dead.)

Because now, as they soar through Northern California, Oregon, Stiles finds that he's not brooding.

He hates it when people walk through him, look through him, because it's a reminder that in _their_ world, he doesn't exist, a complete non-factor in their everyday life. He hates that he's alone on most days. He hates that no one believes in him. He hates that Peter's offer to join the darkness had been honeyed temptation tempered with understanding. He hates that he doesn't remember anything, and that his teeth are something that Lydia's hidden away. He hates that he's the youngest, that he's barely realised his powers, that they've been doing this since before his parents' parents' parents' were alive.

But he doesn't hate this, with Derek, who has finally calmed down, drinking in the sights of the landmarks beneath him, nose twitching, heartbeat a steady thud against Stiles' hands.

"Huh," Derek says, just loud enough to be heard over the whistling wind. "It can't compare to the tunnels, but," he struggles to find the words, reluctant to offer the compliment, but needs to distract Stiles from the fact that he's enjoying this. "You know what I mean."

Stiles wants to gloat, but he doesn't, because he knows that the bird's eye view is pretty fantastic. The wind is, also, a less lurchy ride than Finstock's sled, tricked out and painted with his old football number, pulled by reindeer that Stiles is sure are rabid. All that foaming at the mouth can't be healthy.

So all he answers with is "I know," and points out the landmarks to him. This mountain, that glacier, and before he knows it they've gone over Mount St. Helens in Washington, Vancouver in British Columbia. It's the first time they've carried on a conversation that hasn't ended in Stiles' being slammed against a wall or Derek being knocked over and frozen over, and it's not nice but it's close enough. They still trade barbs, and won't ever see eye to eye. Derek is rough on the outside and inside alike, and Stiles' gooey center is a block of ice.

The moment is over as soon as Stiles drops Derek from twenty feet in the air once they arrive at Finstock's workshop, unable to resist a prank no matter the situation. A boomerang hits him upside the head because he's too busy laughing to dodge it, and Stiles freezes it over and throws it back, clipping two yetis and an elf in the process.

They get manhandled by the aforementioned yetis, and taken inside for the debriefing. What follows is another emergency, another state of crisis, another time to overcome adversity through their powers combined. Pitch is back again, because Pitch Black is like a cockroach that just won't die. They go on to save the world (again), and it spins on, oblivious (still). 

Stiles goes back to working over his areas, bringing winter weather with him wherever he goes, causing trickery, encouraging snow days. 

But he plans, in his spare time, instead of wishing he could comfort Scott and tell him none of it was his fault. Scott has moved on, doesn't weep at night and doesn't think of himself as a killer. He's moved on, and now it's Stiles' turn.

So he plans. 

Easter of 2013 is going to bring a storm to remember, and if Derek happens to chase him down afterwards, hopping with rage (hopefully literally), then even better.

Stiles smiles up into the sky, and for once, doesn't resent the sun for its warmth.

**Author's Note:**

> i'll just write a drabble, i said  
> it'll be quick, i said  
> have to get it out of my head, i said
> 
> derek's human!pooka form is loosely inspired by [Mookie000's](http://25.media.tumblr.com/fd5918644d158fc9e5ab297d08e0d14c/tumblr_meoqekyodc1qij4gjo1_r1_1280.png) human!bunnymund design.
> 
>  
> 
> (for those waiting on looking for more updates, there should be one as soon as i get home from vacay)


End file.
